Have you made the move to Skype 5.0? If not, this latest report from Disruptive Telephony may get you thinking. The writer in this piece discovered a “secret” feature hidden among the many IRC-style chat commands that is not included on the list. This new feature allows for a group chat using Skype 5.0 for Windows or Mac.
Another cool aspect of this new feature is that you can type a command that will generate a URL so you can simply pass it along to anyone else you want in on the call. You’ll see the URL in your chat window. This URL can be sent to people via Skype IM, other IM, e-mail, Twitter, Facebook (News – Alert), you name it. Then, anyone who clicks on the link is automatically dropped into the conference call – as long as they have Skype installed.
With Skype 5.0, you not only gain the ability to click on a link to join a conference call, you can also name the conference by providing some text as a “token” to the “golive” command. The resulting URL means you could actually create multiple URLs that get passed around for different teams to use at different times.
Even better, you can create the URL without the golive command. Simply make up the URL using this format: skype:skypename?call&token=text. You can then pass this URL around to anyone on your list and they simply click on it to jump into a call with you – pretty cool, isn’t it?
This approach to conference calling is great for those who want to drive internal collaboration. A team using group chat may find they come to an issue that is better resolved if they simply talk about it. Entering the /golive command to then get on a call is simple and all can quickly join in the call.
There are a few things to keep in mind, like the fact that the host computer manages all the streams and needs to have a wide and clean pipe to move that amount of data. And, all users must have Skype 5.0 for Windows or Mac. Of course, the latter is easy to get and all parties can quickly begin chatting – live that is.
Courtesy of TMCnet.com.
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